A New Fear Awakens

I’m excited about Star Wars: The Force Awakens. I have been since it was announced. And nothing I’ve seen since then has given me cause for concern.

There have been no pod races. No midiclorians. No one seems to have been told to act as wooden as possible.

So, I’m left with only excitement, or the ability to create brand new things to be worried about right out of my own little noggin. Which, of course, is what I just did. Just now. Five minutes ago. With no external prompting. And rather than keep this nonsense to myself, I want to share it with you.

I was thinking about Harrison Ford, and how exciting its been to see him in the trailers with Chewbacca and with all the younger, new characters. And then I was thinking how unlikely it was that Harrison Ford had signed on to a three-picture deal, which may or may not be accurate.

And then, I thought of 90210.

I was less excited when The CW brought us back to West Beverly High School than I am for Star Wars, but that may only be because it would seem strange to be this excited about that. I was, however, pretty excited.

Especially when I learned that Jennie Garth was coming back. There was going to be a tangible connection to Beverly Hills, 90210.

And then, they said Nat was coming back. And then. Whoa. Whoa. Whoa. Stop the clock! Shannen Doherty was coming back.

There were 1000 ways this could still be terrible, but the idea that they could convince Brenda to return from London was pretty amazing. No one thought that would ever happen.

In much the same way no one ever thought Harrison Ford would play Han Solo again. Largely because both Ford and Doherty (this marking the first time the two have been mentioned in the same sentence in the history of mankind) had said they would never go back to play those roles again.

Scoring Jennie Garth was cool, but it seemed about as hard to do as scoring Anthony Daniels.

Then, you know what happened? Probably not, because the Venn Diagram of Star Wars fans and 90210 fans has about three people in the intersecting segment. The show was almost entirely about the new kids at West Bev. Kelly had some stuff to do, and Brenda and Donna came back for brief story arcs, but after the first season, Kelly had less to do and the focus shifted entirely to Annie, and Dixon, and the rest of the gang.

And that’s when I realized that Star Wars was about to do that too.

I have no idea what The Force Awakens is about, on purpose. I don’t want to know. But it’s going to be about Finn, and Poe, and Rae and by episode VIII, someone may say, “Han had to go back to London to adopt a baby,” or something, and that will be that.

This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, after all lots of kids would be lucky to be adopted by Han Solo. And it’s most certainly necessary to continue the story in perpetuity like Disney plans.

But, I was suddenly filled with the fear that this transition would leave me wanting.

Which is a dumb thing to fear, because I have no power to change this one way or another and the story is what it is. But there it is anyway. Star Wars is about to go all 90210 on us.

You’ve been warned.

But don’t be afraid of that. Because fear is the path to the dark side.